paragiraffe

Links for 2008-08-06 [del.icio.us]

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0500

JeffCroft.com: “Default” templates in Django
Jeff covers some cleverness you can do with Django templates. You know, I never think to write up stuff like this because it all seems so obvious to me, but it's really not.
Paris Hilton Responds to McCain Ad from Paris Hilton, Chris Henchy, and Adam "Ghost Panther" McKay
The sad thing is, people would vote for her.
TV might cause autism. - By Gregg Easterbrook - Slate Magazine
This is really, really interesting and possibly frightening. Related: <a href="http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1650352,00.html">Baby Einsteins: Not So Smart After All</a>.

Links for 2008-08-04 [del.icio.us]

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0500

McSweeney's Rejects Mike Mussina's Seventh Consecutive Submission | The Onion - America's Finest News Source
"'Sometimes the best ideas come to you on the mound,' Mussina said. 'That's why I always carry around my little black notebook on the field.'" Baseball + trying to get accepted to McSweeney's = article that was pretty much written for me.

Links for 2008-08-01 [del.icio.us]

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Braves make no additional deals | ajc.com
I love Will Ohman. Please keep him.
DjangoCon! at Matt Croydon::Postneo
"I love that we’ll have both Journalist-programmers and Programmer-journalists on the panel, and I love that Django is so often the glue that brings the two together."
Last.fm – the Blog · Quality Control
The bears. I want the bears.

Links for 2008-07-31 [del.icio.us]

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Twitter / fakemerlinmann
Okay, I'm a navel-gazing dork because I find this funny, but he had me at "Unnnnnnhhhhhhhh...Quicksilver or whatever."

Links for 2008-07-30 [del.icio.us]

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0500

V8 // ShaunInman.com
Holy crap, this rotated in NetNewsWire and freaked me out.
Video - Ohman Does Carey - Baseball
Shaun sent this to me earlier today. The best part is where he questions Brian McCann's weight.

Links for 2008-07-29 [del.icio.us]

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Changeset 8136 - Django Code - Trac
Django just added support for "through" tables on many-to-many relationships. Pinch me.
Not everyone is sold on the Braves trading Teixeira - Big League Stew - MLB - Yahoo! Sports
Sure, I'd love to keep Teixeira, he's a true professional. But let's be realistic here.
Atlanta ranks as world's busiest airport | ajc.com
We are still the winner.

Lucky number thirteen

maura@paragiraffe.com (Maura Chace) — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:50:53 -0000

So I moved this past weekend, and I got to thinking about all the places I’ve lived.

The apartment my parents were renting in New Bedford, MA, when I was born. I don’t remember this at all.
The second apartment we lived in after I was born, also in New Bedford, MA.
Our first house, Fairhaven, MA (Hacker St).
Our second house, Fairhaven, MA (North Walnut Ave, which later became Castle Ave once 911 moved in).
Our first house in Tennessee, in Franklin.
My freshman dorm room at UT, in Knoxville, where I lived with my roommate Rachel.
My sophomore dorm room at UT, where I lived alone.
My first apartment, with Tara and Lindsey and their four cats, junior year. (Never again.)
My second apartment, with my college BFF Brandon, my senior year. (We had a lot of good times here, including Long Island Iced Tea nights on Thursdays.)
My first apartment by myself, same complex as #9. I painted the whole thing, and that was a huge mistake!
My second apartment by myself, still in Knoxville. It was a studio, and I really liked that place.
My first apartment in Atlanta, another studio, but a super-swanky one. I’d still be living there if not for…
My huge industrial-loft-type apartment, on Peachtree Street, with Shaun.

Yikes. I’m buying a house after this and staying there forever.

Links for 2008-07-25 [del.icio.us]

Sat, 26 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Review: X-Files Flick Falls Short of Show's Glory Days | The Underwire from Wired.com
Yeah...
Well, it's all over already. McCain beat Hillary, according to McCain's website. : reddit.com
There's a screenshot in the comments. Seriously folks, someone will find anything you put on teh interwebs.

DjangoCon 2008

maura@paragiraffe.com (Maura Chace) — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 22:19:14 -0000

Uh, yeah, there’s no clever way to say this. In September there will be the first ever DjangoCon, and I’m on a panel on Sunday called “Django in Journalism.” And it’s at Google headquarters. Yeah.

I think my fellow panelist Matt Waite put it best when he said:

My three reactions, in rough order:
1. I am so excited I can’t even tell you.
2. I am so honored it’s ridiculous.
3. I am so scared out of my freaking gourd it’s not even funny.

Personally, I am going with “scared shitless.”

Anyway, I am super-excited and honored to be part of the first DjangoCon. I am also very excited to be a girl using Django. And if you’re on the speaker list or happen to get one of the 200 coveted slots, I can’t wait to meet you.

Peachtree Road Race

maura@paragiraffe.com (Maura Chace) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 03:05:13 -0000

This past weekend I ran my first 10K, and of course I did it in style, on the 4th of July and in the world’s largest (for now): The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Peachtree Road Race.

The Peachtree Road Race is a bit of an Atlanta tradition and spectacle, and except for the Kenyans at the front who will actually win, it’s a big, 6.2 mile party. Only seeded runners get a chip, so for the rest of us it was walk/run/whatever. You just have to make it to the end, because the most important part of finishing the race is picking up your coveted, hideously ugly t-shirt.

(Here are a lot of Peachtree Road Race pictures. I didn’t bring my camera because I was trying to be serious about running it. Ha!)

5K is really my distance (and I certainly haven’t mastered that yet), but going 10K was not all that bad. I think this was a largely mental advantage; there was simply no viable way to not finish. Plus, the finish line was about half a dozen blocks from my apartment, so I was just heading home.

Next year I might even train for it!

First album I've been excited about in a while

maura@paragiraffe.com (Maura Chace) — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 21:28:21 -0000

I’m in a familiar but frustrating place again, where all the music I have is over-listened and tired and I can’t find anything new I like. Through it all, though, I’ve been listening to Phantom Planet’s new album, Raise the Dead, extensively.

I’ve been a Phantom Planet fan for a long time, but I was still struck by the fact that I liked this new album immediately. The catchy songs are just so damn catchy, and they are backed up by more complex/more rockin’ songs later on in the tracklist. For me, it’s a nice balance between their earlier stuff and their self-titled, the first album released after Jason Schwartzman’s departure.

Raise the Dead took almost two years to make, and is influenced by Alex Greenwald’s fascination with cults and cult leaders, most notably on the song “Leader”: “Now we’ll put you in our uniform / Everyone will be reborn / Wear us over where your heart is / Your new life with us has started.” Here’s an LA Times article with a little more info.

You can listen to a few tracks on the band’s MySpace page. My favorites are “Do the Panic,” “Leader,” “Ship Lost at Sea,” “Too Much Too Often” and “Leave Yourself for Somebody Else.”

"What happened to graham on bachelorette"

maura@paragiraffe.com (Maura Chace) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 01:24:21 -0000

Normally I wouldn’t want to dedicate a whole post to reality television, but it seems that my search referrers are just crying out for this one. “What happened to graham on bachelorette,” they want to know. Daily. The search hits seem to have come from this tweet:

The Bachelorette: Graham is my favorite! I’m calling it now! 10:27 PM May 19, 2008

Friends, I am so sad, because I was wrong. Graham went home on Monday. Or so Television Without Pity tells me; I was at an (unfortunate) baseball game that night. I find this bogus because DeAnna obviously had the most chemistry with “unbelievable smokin’ hot” Graham, so whoever she picks I will consider a joke. Also, I hate being wrong.

Anyway, if you’re wondering where Graham Bunn is, don’t worry, like most contestants, his primary/secondary (up for debate) goal for appearing on the show was to further his own career. You can read more about him and his charity work and see a smattering of pictures at grahambunn.com. So, there you go.

Seviche (or ceviche)

maura@paragiraffe.com (Maura Chace) — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 01:51:43 -0000

For what seems like forever I’ve wanted to make Rick Bayless’s recipe for seviche, and I finally got to on Saturday night. Seviche is an appetizer of raw fish pickled in citrus juice. My buddy Rick uses limes and mixes the fish with avocado and a salsa of tomatoes, white onion, cilantro and serrano peppers. Add salt, olive oil and/or a little sugar to taste.

We decided to go with tuna. This was some good tuna.

We bought a reamer to turn the limes into fresh lime juice. I’m sure we’ll be using it a lot.

So, seviche actually turned out quite different than I was thinking, because I assumed the fish would come out a lot more raw and taste as such. In actuality, the fish looked and tasted cooked (rare, on some of the larger pieces) and was mostly just limey.

You could serve this in a bowl with chips like salsa, in tacos or on chips for tostadas like we did.

Yum! If I ever throw a party and invite you, this is what you’ll be eating.

Wines I've enjoyed recently

maura@paragiraffe.com (Maura Chace) — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 01:21:01 -0000

A couple of weekends ago we finally got the chance to go out for Shaun‘s birthday (damn you, lately unsatisfying Braves baseball), and I chose, appropriately, a restaurant named Shaun’s in Inman Park. Pretty much all you need to know about this place is their French fries are fried in duck fat. Sold? I thought so. Our server sold us on this Syrah Rosé from Roshambo Winery, and with the awesomeness of the label, despite drinking a chilled, pink wine, it couldn’t have been better. When a different member of the staff complimented our choice, we had won the sommelier lottery.

Our local Trader Joe’s has a good selection of (cheaper) wine, and they include lots of helpful information on the price cards, which is the only way I buy wine now. When they find particularly good ones, they slap a “Discovery Wine” tag on the display. One of these was Epicuro Aglianico Beneventano (2006, though), which I can’t give you much background on except that it is Italian, and there is a horse on the bottle. Trader Joe’s tasters rated this wine higher than a $38 bottle (it was about $6). It’s a great weeknight wine for when you’re not too worried about pairings. (We are rarely worried about pairings.)

Shaun saw this 2006 Robert Mondavi Private Selection Pinot Noir in a store and thought, that has to be good! And it must have been, because we repurchased. I always feel a bit pretentious/lamely Sideways when I drink Pinot Noir, but oh well, it was good.

Atlanta PSA #2 - Brunch

maura@paragiraffe.com (Maura Chace) — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 17:41:04 -0000

One of my favorite restaurants close to my apartment is The Flying Biscuit Cafe. Although the original location of this local chain is in Candler Park, I am a big fan of the Midtown location with its “patio” that seats you just below street level with open windows for people watching. They are known for their brunch (and, obviously, biscuits), but they serve breakfast food all day long. Thus, I am always baffled as to why people would wait in line to eat there on Saturday and Sunday mornings, when you could go another time of day and get seated immediately. Another popular spot is the Crescent Moon in Decatur, and although the food was good (especially the pancakes), does it make a lot of sense to wait 45+ minutes for breakfast? I’m not sure.

Brunching is a big thing in Atlanta, and it seems the vast majority of restaurants have a brunch menu of some sort. Just this morning we had brunch at Osteria 832, primarily a pasta/pizza place, and I had a quite serious omelette with fresh ingredients and free-range eggs. Just down the street, Atkins Park has an excellent brunch — do not miss the Grand Marnier French toast. No waiting required.

One outlier to the brunch wait is J. Christopher’s, where there will be a delay in getting your table, but at least they give you coffee in the meantime.

Who needs indices?

maura@paragiraffe.com (Maura Chace) — Tue, 27 May 2008 23:44:31 -0000

A couple of weeks ago I wanted to make a recipe I knew I had written about on my site — Linguine with Sausage and Peppers. I hopped over to my search page and looked up “recipe copyright” since I remembered I had shared that recipe in the post I wrote on that topic. My search revealed two results:

Hmm. That 2007 index isn’t very useful if you were looking for a particular post, but it’s seemingly relevant to search engines since it contains the same keywords I searched for. Presumably you’d only visit the 2007 index if (a) you’re me, and you’re feeling nostalgic, or (b) you’re a search engine and crawling my whole site. So, how do you tell search engines not to care about that post index?

Later, pointless pages

You might be familiar with robots.txt, where you specify in one place files/directories for search engines to exclude. But, that wasn’t really working for me. Luckily, you can specify some robots directives with special meta tags, and I just told search engines not to index the pages but to follow the links on them.

<META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”NOINDEX, FOLLOW”>

(The follow isn’t actually necessary.)

Does it work?

Google seems to have removed the index pages from its search (but probably not from its awesome, evil, secret database) as shown by this search: recipe copyright site:www.paragiraffe.com - Google Search. Yahoo!, which I use for my site search, seemed to have picked up on the change, but as of this writing the index is back: recipe copyright site:www.paragiraffe.com - Yahoo! Search Results. So, it worked a little, and maybe I just need to give it more time.

Note: Here’s a Wordpress plugin for Robots Meta Tags.

Holding up

maura@paragiraffe.com (Maura Chace) — Fri, 23 May 2008 02:51:02 -0000

For those of you keeping track at home we are over a quarter of the way into the baseball season. The Braves have played 46 games, 25 of those at home, and we have attended 21 of those! (We missed two weekday day games because of pesky things like work, one for sickness and one for a wedding.) After the last four games of the homestand this weekend it’ll be an even 25, which is kind of crazy, because a lot of people don’t go to 25 major league baseball games in their whole lives!

I’ve often joked that people should start a pool trying to guess the first home game where we are well, have no prior commitments, and choose not to go. As it turns out, going to games all the time is not that big of a deal, although I do wish I had a little more downtime. Some people have expressed surprise bordering on sympathy for the sheer number of games we’re going to attend, but if we hadn’t wanted to do it, we wouldn’t have bought season tickets. And it beats sitting at home in front of the television.

One of the things I’ve come to appreciate this season is how much more fun and interesting a baseball game is when you really know what’s going on. Sometimes I feel bad for fans at the game who aren’t really aware of happenings like a complete game shutout or temporarily putting a pitcher in left field to keep him in the game.

Atlanta PSA #1 - Underground

maura@paragiraffe.com (Maura Chace) — Mon, 19 May 2008 01:23:55 -0000

We have a lot of great/passable tourist attractions in Atlanta: Georgia Aquarium, World of Coke, CNN Center, our various professional sports teams, etc. And then there’s this thing called Underground Atlanta, located at Five Points (basically, the middle of downtown). From their About Us page:

Historic Underground Atlanta offers unique shopping, dining, history and entertainment to Atlantan’s [sic] and our visitors.

It’s a mall. And not even a cool mall. We have much, much better malls (Lenox Square, Phipps Plaza). Now that the World of Coke is no longer located adjacent to Underground Atlanta, there’s no reason to go there. And even before then, I’ll let you in on a little secret: The Underground is Atlanta’s joke on tourists. Now you can skip it, except if you take MARTA’s Braves shuttle to the game. (In which case they make you walk through most of it, which is pure evil.)

On a related note, another good thing to know is that besides IKEA, Atlantic Station just has the same stores you have at home.

Help me buy shoes!

maura@paragiraffe.com (Maura Chace) — Thu, 15 May 2008 22:10:09 -0000

This summer, I have decided I am absolutely, positively going to get these hypothetical sandals I have wanted for years. Let me tell you a little bit about them. First, they are comfortable and can be worn all day at work and for a night out without problems. (This also means they must have little to no heel.) Next, they are strappy, made of (black) leather and if they have buckles or the like, that hardware is dainty (no Birkenstocks). They must have some sort of ankle strap to where they are fastened and cannot be kicked off. Ideally, I could wear them to work with skirts or with shorts, so chunky soles are out.

Options

A Indigo by Clarks Hydrangea

These fit the bill and are relatively inexpensive as well. I kind of figured I would be getting Clarks for the comfort factor. They are well-reviewed.

B Sofft Rena

These are cute. I am not familiar with the brand.

C Naturalizer Blowout

I really like the look of these, but no one has reviewed them yet!

D Timberland Katriel

Kind of similar to above, I like that they are all black.

Or, any suggestions you may have!

Running in the heat

maura@paragiraffe.com (Maura Chace) — Sun, 11 May 2008 17:15:02 -0000

There’s barely a spring in Atlanta, we just go straight to summer, and with global warming that may be how it is for you as well. Last summer I had an exceptionally hard time with the heat, and more or less gave up on running until the fall. I really can’t afford to do that again, so I’ve been trying to work out a “plan.”

First, when it starts getting warmer out, run slower. It can take a couple of weeks for your body to acclimate to running in warmer temperatures. Jeff Galloway offers a handy chart showing how your eight-minute mile time should adjust for temperature. This is definitely something I need to work on. He also suggests taking more walk breaks and, of course, drinking lots of water.

Running in the morning is a great way to beat the heat — I’ve been trying to do this on game days, but in all honesty I’ve only been successful a handful of times. Evening runs are almost as good, and possibly easier to schedule.

Don’t wear cotton — wear some magic moisture-wicking fabric instead. I believe there are few better things to spend my disposable income on than good exercise clothes.

It stormed here last night, so I got lucky today with cool and windy weather. But, it won’t be like this every day, and I’ve got to be more consistent than last summer.

A few of my favorite southern things

maura@paragiraffe.com (Maura Chace) — Wed, 07 May 2008 03:13:42 -0000

You have an inalienable right to free refills of Coke products until your stomach wants to explode. Why has this not caught on everywhere? (I love Diet Coke way more than I should.)

Sometimes at weddings there are two cakes. The second one is called the groom’s cake. Here are two words for you: more cake. What’s not to love? And as a guest it’s only polite to take a piece of each. This is what I call a win-win-win-win-win.

Recently I was discussing food with my sisters, and I think it was Audra who said she didn’t like baked beans? What?! If you like beans, baked beans are just beans in a delicious, sugary sauce. Sugar beans! Anyway, southern pulled pork barbecue (or chicken) is a lot like that, too: sugar meat. Listen, I hate okra, but I will fight you over some good pulled pork.

Going to a lot of shows

maura@paragiraffe.com (Maura Chace) — Thu, 01 May 2008 02:12:43 -0000

In Atlanta it seems there is live music every day of the week, especially this month of April. For Valentine’s Day I got tickets to see Colin Meloy‘s solo tour, and we also saw Spoon and Tapes ‘n Tapes.

Colin Meloy put on a fun little show, although he was admittedly recovering from being sick and forgot many of his lyrics. Opening acts are usually a trial to be endured, but Laura Gibson was awkwardly adorable. With my huge burrito pre-show, it was a good night.

When Spoon tickets went on sale I said “YES! I want to go to that!” and yet I waited to buy tickets. And they sold out. Argh! Luckily I scored a few on StubHub about a week before the show, and for a reasonable price, too. (Originally they were going for $218 each. Does anyone want to see Spoon that badly?) After the release of their newest album, Spoon quickly shot up to the top of my bands-I-really-want-to-see-in-concert list, and they didn’t disappoint. (They did use a lot of pedal effects.) They played almost every song from their newest album, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (except for my favorite! “My Little Japanese Cigarette Case”), plenty of good old ones and even ended with “Small Stakes.” White Rabbits was their first opener, and I kind of loved those guys because they didn’t suck, were short and could have easily staffed two bands. After that was The Walkmen who didn’t play that one song by them I know.

The last time we saw Tapes ‘n Tapes it was in Athens, really late, and it put us driving back to Atlanta after the show around 3:00 a.m. So, it was quite welcome to only have to go over to East Atlanta to see them. This show made me like their new album much more, and a good time was had by all except for that guy who didn’t understand the concept of personal space. Their opener was White Denim, who rocked out, and by rocked out I mean my ears are still ringing.

So, good music in April! I’ve also got Nada Surf coming up at the end of May. Here’s my photos on Flickr tagged with “concert”.